In the same year, Adolescence and Andor have showed that high art can have mass appeal, and that creative risk-taking isn’t just for niche, independent projects. If anything, it can give a show more reach. Keir Starmer invited the creators of Adolescence to 10 Downing Street. Meanwhile, Andor – Tony Gilroy’s take on Star Wars – manages to break new ground in a franchise that’s decades old. The Guardian called it “the best thing to happen to Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back.”

Meet the actor who appears in both. Faye Marsay is DS Misha Frank in Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s one-shot dissection of incel culture. In Andor, she plays Vel Sartha, a woman who leaves behind a life of privilege to rebel against the Empire.

The acclaim both shows received could easily go to somebody’s head. Marsay, however, stays grounded.

“I’m in this very, very, very privileged position,” she tells me. “I’m a bit like ‘whoah, imposter syndrome’!”

Then again, she knows she’s not alone.

“I think [imposter syndrome] is a constant for everyone on Earth, really,” she says, before adding with a smile: “Well, maybe not the narcissists.”

Marsay doesn’t have time for those types, she explains.

“Ego gets in the way,” she says. “We all have one – I’ve got one too – but I think it gets in the way of being able to enjoy it, and what audiences like is watching an actor be completely immersed in something that they love.”

With Adolescence, immersion is the name of the game. A story told in real time has to show everything, including the bits any other show would cut. True, there are the parts where Eddie (Stephen Graham) breaks down in tears, or Jamie (Owen Cooper) thumps his 13-year-old chest at psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty). There are also the moments that are quiet, almost mundane. Think Frank and DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) trying to get through the duller parts of their investigation. Dealing with a duty solicitor, or well-meaning but slightly useless primary school teacher, is hardly thriller material.

These are the bits, however, that provide realism. They make the show all the more horrifying by keeping it disconcertingly close to normal life, but are also easy to overlook. To Marsay, that was never an issue. In fact, it was almost the point.

“Without sounding too pretentious and actor-y, it just has to be about telling the story, and not needing some big moment on you,” said Marsay. “It was a very socialist kind of [production].”

“Using the one-shot style meant that everybody got the exposure that they needed,” she explains. “It’s a dance, Adolescence: it’s the most ensemble thing I’ve ever done in my career, and that includes being on stage. On stage, at some point, somebody’s got a big monologue.”

Frank doesn’t. The closest she gets is in episode two, when she briefly notes that society’s reaction to crimes against women ignores the victim to focus on the perpetrator. Then she moves on, and continues to focus on the perpetrator.

“There’s no screaming or shouting from the female [characters],” Marsay notes. “One, because females have been dealing with violence towards women and girls for a very long time, and two, the point is we need to engage the men to start these conversations.”

“It shone a light on women in a way that they’re almost exasperated with this situation, and I think that that’s true to how a lot of women and young girls feel.”

Viewers were surprised to find the second series of Andor veer into similar territory. Episode three has a scene in which an Imperial officer attempts to rape Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), a topic Marsay says is “incredibly important to address.”

The Star Wars show charts Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) journey from petty thief to revolutionary. Along the way, it uses life under the Empire to explore the psychological toll that fascism takes on its subjects. Oppression can assume many forms, the scene with Bix reminds us, with cruelty and indignity especially targeted at women.

In a broader sense, a story about dictatorship has only got more relevant since it first aired three years ago.

“You could make a comparison with what’s going on today,” says Marsay. “I don’t think that’s the most helpful thing to do, because I think Star Wars has always dealt with these themes, whatever decade it’s been. It’s always relevant.”

Andor tends to draw more from history than the present. There are parallels with the Russian and Haitian revolutions, as well as the resistance movements to Apartheid and Nazi occupation of France. One character, Captain Kaido (Jonjo O’Neill), has a facial wound that resembles a duelling scar. The blemish was a sign of honour amongst well-to-do German and Austrian men in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when fencing was popular. A deep cut in more ways than one, then.

“In Andor, you can get the essence of what someone’s feeling in a half-page scene that some shows would take four or five scenes to get to”

The key to all this, Marsay explains, is Andor’s showrunner, Tony Gilroy.

“[He’s] a man that’s obsessed with history,” Marsay tells me, “so you can see why you have such a breadth of events happening within this show.”

This series, he has Marsay’s character Vel deal with the death of her lover and fellow rebel, Cinta Kaz (Verada Sethu). Or rather, she doesn’t deal with it, because there isn’t time. A year after Cinta dies, Vel is still working as a rebel operative, almost as if nothing happened, grief repressed. Was it hard to convey a turmoil kept strictly on the inside?

“[Gilroy’s] writing just gives you exactly what you need.”

“I was never ringing him and going ‘so what do you think happened in this year?’” she says. “It didn’t need it.”

“Tony writes the human condition pretty well, and he writes it quickly. In this show, you can get the essence of what someone’s feeling in a half-page scene that some shows would take four or five scenes to get to.”

"There’s not a single line where I went ‘um, Tony, I don’t think she would say this’,” she continues. “It was pretty miraculous, actually.”

Now having appeared in multiple shows that enthral viewers and critics alike, does she have a sense of what the winning formula is?

“Good work is about being part of a team and telling a story,” Marsay says. “And not being a twat.”